Mr. Dwight L. Harris

Centauri Sameness Mr. Dwight L. Harris

I was working through my forty one radiation treatments for failing a biopsy. Two lovely female types in hospital scrubs started chatting with me and mentioned they werte not from this surface, Earth of course. They were lovely so I listened. After several weeks of discussions at a local Peking buffet I was invited to go up, you don't fly in star travel, and see the Duchess. The Duchess was the star ship, no crew, just the Dutchess. However as Runus, the surface where the two lovelies were from, was well beyond Earth in technology and Earth was advanced in medical capabilities an interplanetary business arrangement was started. After several more weeks of friendly discussions to meet the President, the US of course, and calm down the media I accepted an invitation to go back to their surface in the Duchess. As us humans can only stand five G's of acceleration or decelleration for long periods time the trip took around nine months to reach the Centauri star and Runus. The Duchess was designed and built to handle around three hundred G's. It seems Einstein was more than a little wrong about the speed of light being the limiting velocity for humans and the Duchess. Light may have a limiting velocity but not large systems built by intelligent engineers and others. Runus was like Earth with similar human religious, military and government problems. Runus also had a mantel shift several centuries ago that moved the waters over the land and almost eliminated the human population. Several other human based planets were discovered around our Milky Way galaxy, one had similar technology and criminals with medical problems plus another had Buck Rogers technology and a planet under a virus attack. The Duchess had an Earth doctor on board and some drugs that seemed to stop the virus. Another medical business outlet was developed. Of course on returning to Earth after being here and there for several years the Earth had changed. A recent mantel slip had wiped out most of the population and surface technology. The concern for the returning humans is could the small population remaining survive with star ship support?